Identifying High Conservation Value (HCV) forests is an essential part of sustainable forest management and a key requirement within the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification process. HCV areas help ensure that rare species, unique ecosystems, and important cultural sites are protected—strengthening both ecological integrity and long-term forest value.
In this episode of Forest Matters, NativState Wildlife Biologist Kevin Wood explains what qualifies as High Conservation Value and why it matters for landowners participating in NativState’s forest carbon programs. Kevin walks through how HCVs are defined, how they’re evaluated, and what landowners can expect if an HCV is identified on their property.
In addition to discussing the role of HCVs within FSC certification, Kevin covers:
- FSC’s Six Categories of High Conservation Value
- Threatened & Endangered Species and Their Habitats
- Rare Ecosystems such as Blackland Prairies
- Cultural and Indigenous Value Sites
- How HCVs Are Identified (data review, surveys, and agency consultation)
- What HCV Designation Means for Landowners
- Management and Monitoring Strategies to Protect Sensitive Areas
Transcript
Forest Matters
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Forest carbon development, sustainable forest management, high conservation value, FSC certification, wildlife biologist, endangered species, sedimentation, pollution, forest management plan, rare ecosystems, cultural values, landowner support, monitoring plan, forestry operations, water quality
SPEAKERS
Michelle Stoll, Kevin Wood
Michelle Stoll 00:49
Well, welcome back to NativState’s Forest Matters podcast. I’ve got Kevin Wood here today, and Kevin is our wildlife biologist and is going to talk to us today about high conservation value and just give us some insight into what that means and how that relates to forest certification. So Kevin, so happy that you’re here.
Kevin Wood: 01:13
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Michelle Stoll: 01:14
Sure. Can you give our viewers and listeners Just some background on how you came to be at native state? What sort of things do you do for the company?
Kevin Wood 01:23
Sure. So I’m, I’m the wildlife biologist for for the company. I’m a Certified Wildlife Biologist, certified senior ecologist. Been here about a year. Before that I managed some public land for for about 10 years.
Michelle Stoll 01:39
Great. So what sort of projects do you work on at NativState? Or let me back up. Did you know anything about carbon forest carbon credits before you started doing wildlife biology at NativState?
Kevin Wood 01:51
Not much. I’d heard about them, but really didn’t know what they were all about.
Michelle Stoll 01:54
Okay, great. Well, let’s jump right in. Then we’re going to talk about HCV, high, high conservation value. So give us the overview. What does that mean? And, yeah, what kinds of things are we talking about with HCV?
Kevin Wood 02:11
Sure. So high conservation value is something that was created specifically for FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council for forest certification. So got the definition here. It’s, it’s actually a separate group called the HCV network, high conservation value network that created these for FSC. So it’s an HCV is a biological, ecological, social or cultural value of outstanding significance or critical importance. And there’s actually six of these HCV, and remember, Forest Stewardship Council, FSC is a global certification body, so you know, some of these things don’t necessarily apply here in the United States, but they’re more for that global scenario, So you got species diversity is, is one; landscape level, ecosystems and mosaics is two; ecosystems and habitats; ecosystem services; community needs and cultural values. So we’re really, really focused on just maybe three of these: species diversity, ecosystems, and then cultural values. Okay, so, like the species diversity, we’re looking for threatened and endangered species, and even if you have a threatened or endangered species on your property, that doesn’t necessarily make it an HCV, there’s a little more to it, and we may get into that a little later on.
Michelle Stoll 03:52
Yeah. That’s interesting. Let’s bookmark that and come back to that.
Kevin Wood 03:56
Talk about how we go about determining an HCV, and then like, landscape level ecosystems, those are, those are 500, 1,000 acres that are, that are rare ecosystems, and we just don’t really have those in the eastern United States on that, that scale. You know, if, if they are, they’re, they’re public land, normally, so in the private land setting, there’s just not many of those
Michelle Stoll 04:26
It’s because of the size of the land
Kevin Wood 04:27
That’s correct. So it’s a possibility if you’re a super large landowner, but most folks aren’t going to have the land base to meet that criteria. And then ecosystems and habitats, you’re looking for rare ecosystems like, say, a Blackland Prairie or something like that. That’s that’s not super common, that we want to, want to make sure we’re protecting those.
Michelle Stoll 04:50
And we have some projects that are in that have Blackland Prairies. Right? Where are those?
Kevin Wood 04:57
More like south Arkansas, southwest Arkansas, that’s going. Be, be some of that area.
Michelle Stoll 05:01
All right, what kind of species would you normally find in a place like that?
Kevin Wood 05:07
Well, you’re looking at at rare plant species that just have to have those open conditions to grow
Michelle Stoll 05:13
I gotcha. And then there are going to be other species that rely on those plants, I imagine,
Kevin Wood
Correct, yeah 05:17
Michelle Stoll 05:18
But that’s for another episode.
Kevin Wood 05:21
And then you’ve got the cultural values as well. So you know, we’re, we’re interested in any indigenous peoples, areas that that may need to be protected. And most of the time, those say the Native American tribes will, will have a list of areas that they know about that that’s important to their culture. So we’ll, we’ll ask them about that. They have some databases they can run that through and tell us whether there’s, there’s any sites near or on the properties we’re managing.
Michelle Stoll 05:57
Gotcha. So really, the two that stand out the most listening to you, or they’re talking about those particular species, endangered species, and then those ecosystems that are rare or very special,
Kevin Wood 06:09
Right
Michelle Stoll 06:10
Okay, great. Let’s see. So help me understand, walk, walk me through the HCV process. Like, how do you — we kind of touched on this earlier. When you go out and you visit a property, how do you determine that it meets one of those, those areas that we talked about?
Kevin Wood 06:29
So it really starts out with a desk-based analysis. So we take a take a shape file, so that’s just a digitized file of of your property, run that through a couple of databases. So just Arkansas, for an example, you got the Arkansas Natural Heritage commission will send that file to them. They have a database of where threatened and endangered, rare species are located. They’ll tell us, hey, that that species is near here, or we have records of it on that property, in some cases, and then you’ve got a database with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It’ll tell you, hey, this project could affect these certain endangered species. There’s another organization called Nature Serve, they’re actually a branch of the Nature Conservancy, or used to be. So it’s like a clearing house of of rare threatened and endangered species locations. They’ll give you some generalized areas of of where these species might be found. And so using all that data and some other sources as well, I’ll kind of go through there and and look at these criteria. We’ve got a kind of a checklist, it’s with some guiding questions on it. So is it endemic? Say, is an endemic species only found in a certain area, so species with very small home ranges, or global ranges are are going to be more susceptible to extirpation or or harm than than something that say its range is half the United States. So you look at all those factors, and then we may actually have to go out on the property and do a survey to see if, if that species is there or not. So So to answer the question, it all depends —
Michelle Stoll 08:39
Of course
Kevin Wood 08:40
— depends on the species. Depends on where it’s at, what, what we’re trying to accomplish there.
Michelle Stoll 08:46
So you start off with the data that’s been done of what, what’s likely to be there, what you might see. And then if it ticks some of those boxes, then you might go out there and actually look around,
Kevin Wood 08:57
Right
Michelle Stoll 08:58
So does that apply, like, say, say, the data says, okay, there might be this certain bird out there, say, a red cockaded woodpecker? You go out there, you don’t necessarily see one, but you know that that habitat supports that endangered species. Does that make it HCV?
Kevin Wood 09:19
Not necessarily. So what is supposed to be greater than normal concentrations of of that species? So just it takes a lot to make it an HCV really
Michelle Stoll 09:34
Okay, because that remind me again, tie that back into FSC certification. So that would be part of that requirement for certification, so it’s going to be a little bit have higher expectations for demonstrating it?
Kevin Wood 09:49
Correct
Michelle Stoll 09:50
Okay, great. So can you give me an example of, I’m just curious. I like to have something concrete. Is there an example of an HCV, whether it’s an area ecosystem or a species that you’ve encountered on one of the projects?
Kevin Wood 10:11
Sure. one that comes to mind is property in north Arkansas borders a river, and that river has two endangered species in it, the yellow cheeked darter and the speckled pocketbook, which is a muscle a clam.
Michelle Stoll 10:29
I love those names.
Kevin Wood 10:30
So, you know, look at, looking at the data I saw, hey, these species may occur here. And ended up doing a consultation with with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they confirm, yes, those species are are found along this property in that river. So you know, the threats to those species are sedimentation and pollution, which forestry operations can increase. Those things in into rivers like that. So are, once you identify an HCV, you have to have a management plan and then a monitoring plan as well. So…
Michelle Stoll 11:13
Okay, that leads me to my next question. What does this mean for landowners once they have, once you’ve identified a high conservation value on their property. What does that, what does that mean for them?
Kevin Wood 11:24
Yeah, so again, it’s going to depend on what what the species is, but in that particular case, it was just a buffer along the river. So in any forestry operation, you have what’s called an SMZ, a stream side management zone. So that’s a, normally, a 3,200 foot buffer along the river that you’re gonna do either reduced harvest or no harvest at all. So I believe in that case we we said we’re gonna leave 150-foot buffer, or 200-foot buffer, because it’s, it’s a pretty steep bank going into the river. So the steeper the slope, the greater the buffer is going to be. So just a 200-foot buffer, don’t do any forestry operations in in that area, you know. And then our monitoring is going to be, once a year, we go out there make sure those forest conditions are are correct for, you know, good water quality.
Michelle Stoll 12:22
Okay, so it sounds like the recommendations are really just good forest management.
Kevin Wood 12:29
Correct
Michelle Stoll 12:30
Things that you would do in a conservation program, in a carbon forest carbon program to protect your streams and water quality. So it sounds like something that a landowner would do normally, to protect their to protect the streams in that case.
Kevin Wood 12:44
So you don’t want to look at these as, oh, I have an HCV on my property. I’m restricted from doing things. We’re, we want to, we want to inform the landowners that something’s there. So a lot of landowners don’t, don’t realize, hey, there’s, there’s something that is rare in this stream that runs along my property, and people care about what they know about. So that’s the goal here is to help the landowners inform them what’s there, and then, through our management plans, help the landowner along to make sure we’re doing the right things to protect that species?
Michelle Stoll 13:23
Yeah, that’s exciting though, to find out that you’ve got something rare and interesting on your property, I imagine, especially if what you need to do to protect that is going to be part of your management plan anyway,
Kevin Wood 13:34
Right
Michelle Stoll 13:35
So how does NativState support landowners? And you mentioned monitoring and putting together that plan,
Kevin Wood 13:40
Yeah, So in in the forest management plan that every landowner gets, they’ll there’ll be a section in there if, if you have an HCV, or if you have an endangered species, or a possible endangered species, it will be in there and and there’s some management recommendations in there of what that species needs and how to how to manage your forest to benefit those species. So those are in there. We’ve got a team of foresters that you can contact. You can contact me as well to to help with any any management activities going on.
Michelle Stoll 14:16
Well, that sounds great. I feel like I know a whole lot more about this. I hope our listeners have learned something about I liked what you said about, uh, you know, being it’s interesting that What did you say that people care about,
Kevin Wood 14:30
what they what they know about,
Michelle Stoll 14:31
— what they know about. Yeah, I think that’s a good takeaway in a lot of areas. Well, Kevin wood, thank you for being with us. We’ll talk to you again in another episode and dig a little more deeply into biodiversity and ecosystems and things like that. So
Kevin Wood 14:45
Sounds good.
Michelle Stoll 14:46
Yeah, thank you so much.